Tuesday, February 2, 2010

New "We Are The World" Has Been Recorded!

We are still the world if Quincy Jones and an all-star squad of contemporary music stars have anything to sing about it.

On Monday, Jones, Lionel Richie and Wyclef assembled what appears to be the entire VIP section from Sunday night's Grammy Awards to re-record the monster selling single, which made $63 Million in sales! Can "We Are The World – 25 For Haiti" bring home that kind of bacon in the Internet Age? In only due time, we will find out.

On Monday night, The Jonas Brothers, T-Pain, Miley Cyrus, Celine Dion, Kanye West, Brian Wilson and dozens of others showed up at Henson Recording Studios, the same studio where the original was recorded 25 years ago.

Last time, the cause was starvation in Africa, in particular the devastating Ethiopian famine of 1984-85. This time it's Haiti, where last month's earthquake killed nearly 200,000 and left as many as 1 million Haitians homeless.

The new line-up of stars performing this incredible hit included Justin Bieber, Lil Wayne, Harry Connick, Jr., Snoop Dogg, Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand (rumor has it she gets a solo), Josh Groban, Usher, and Jeff Bridges.

Along with Bridges, plenty of other A-listers "lend a helping hand" and their voices which will grace the music single and video, directed by Paul Haggis ('Crash,' 'In the Valley of Elah'). The video is set to air on NBC during the Friday, February 12th Opening Ceremony of the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Nicole Richie tweeted her excitement. "I was 4 years old in a studio watching my dad record We Are The World, & today I get to do it again," she wrote Monday afternoon.

The elder Richie spent two weeks in 1985 at Michael Jackson's Encino estate penning the track with the King of Pop. Quincy Jones, who also has a famous daughter involved in the remake – Rashida Jones, produced the song along with Grammy-winning producer Michael Omartian.

As of 2009, 20 million copies of "We Are the World" have been sold, making it the best-selling single of all-time.

No Michael Jackson this time. No Kenny Loggins, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan or Paul Simon either. At least that's the word as of now.


Several stand-ins were present at Monday's shoot whose silhouettes will reportedly be replaced by famous counterparts in post-production.

Could it be that original supergroup members Bette Middler, Dan Akroyd and Cyndi Lauper got a 21st century encore? We think not.


We'll have to wait until February 12th to find out who else performed. Stay tuned!

For your enjoyment, here is the original "We Are The World" video:


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